Image credit: Book cover of Friendships in the Square: Muslim Activism in Historic London, 1880s to the 1940s by M.A. Sherif

It is a real pleasure to celebrate the launch of Friendships in the Square.  From the moment you encounter the title, you are drawn into a world that feels at once intimate and expansive. It gestures towards a particular geography—Trafalgar Square, Russell Square, the squares of Bloomsbury and beyond—but also towards a set of relationships, encounters, and solidarities that unfolded within and around those spaces. The title invites us to imagine not only where these friendships took place, but what they made possible: new forms of belonging, new political imaginaries, and new ways of being Muslim in this country long before such questions became part of our contemporary vocabulary.

What strikes you immediately, as you begin reading, is the elegance of the prose. There is a clarity and warmth to the writing that makes the book accessible without ever compromising its intellectual depth. It is a rare achievement: a work that is meticulously researched yet deeply humane, grounded in archival rigour yet alive with narrative energy. The style is not merely decorative, however; it is integral to the book’s purpose. It allows these historical figures — often marginalised, often misrepresented, often entirely forgotten — to step forward with dignity, complexity, and voice.

And as I read Friendships in the Square, I found myself walking through a London that feels faintly Dickensian and Thackerayan—not because the book imitates those great chroniclers, but because it restores to their familiar streets a cast of characters they never imagined. Dickens and Thackeray gave us the fog, the bustle, the eccentricities of the Victorian city; this book populates that same imaginative geography with Muslim thinkers, activists, and friends whose presence reshapes the story of London itself. It is as if the Victorian novelists sketched the stage, with this work finally introducing the protagonists whom they overlooked—people whose friendships, ideas and everyday encounters animated the very same squares and streets. In doing so, the book turns the imaginative map of nineteenth‑century London inside out, revealing a city that was always more diverse, more interconnected, and more intellectually alive than canonical novels ever allowed.

Indeed, this is one of Friendships in the Square’s great strengths: its historical originality. We are accustomed to hearing about Muslims in Britain through a particular set of frames—migration, labour, community formation, and, more recently, the fraught politics of identity and security. But Friendships in the Square takes us somewhere else entirely. It transports us to a period when Muslims were already present in the heart of the imperial metropolis, here not as passive subjects but as thinkers, activists, diplomats, scholars and friends. These were individuals who moved confidently through the intellectual and political circles of their time, forging relationships that cut across lines of race, class and creed.

The book’s originality lies not simply in the stories it tells.  Its freshness also lies the way in which it tells them. Friendships in the Square moves away from the orthodox narratives that have dominated the historiography—narratives that often treat Muslims as peripheral or reactive—and instead reveals a differently contoured landscape. Here, Muslims are not simply acted upon; they are actors. They build networks, establish institutions, form alliances, and shape debates. They are present in the salons of Bloomsbury, in the lecture halls of London, in the political gatherings of early twentieth century-London. They are part of the city’s intellectual bloodstream.

This shift in perspective is game-changing. It allows us to see the early history of Islam in Britain not as a footnote to imperial history, but as a vibrant, interconnected story in its own right. Time and again, Friendships in the Square shows how its cast of characters—through their friendships, their activism, their scholarship, and their everyday interactions—subverted widespread assumptions of their era. They challenged the racial hierarchies of empire through political argument and also through the simple, radical act of living fully and visibly in the world: speaking, writing, debating, teaching and forming relationships that defied the logic of colonial subordination.

One of the most compelling aspects of the book is how it constructs such a richly textured picture of these people’s relationships with wider society. We see them navigating the social worlds of London with agility and purpose. We see them forming alliances with suffragists, socialists, anti‑imperialists and fellow travellers of many kinds. We see them engaging with the cultural and political currents of their time—rather than as outsiders looking in, they were participants shaping the conversation. Accordingly, the book situates their contributions within the broader socio‑historical and cultural contexts in which they operated, allowing us to appreciate the full mosaic of their lives.

This contextualisation is crucial. It reminds us that history is never simply a collection of individual stories; it is a web of relationships, structures and possibilities. By placing its protagonists within their wider worlds, Friendships in the Square helps us understand what they did and, importantly, why it mattered—and why it still matters today. Their lives illuminate the lengthy entangled histories of Islam and Britain, histories that are too often obscured by contemporary anxieties and political noise.

I want to pause here to acknowledge the extraordinary research that underpins this work. The archival record for many of these figures is scattered, fragmentary and in some cases almost non‑existent. Piecing together their stories requires both diligence and imagination: the ability to read across archives, to follow faint traces, to reconstruct networks from partial evidence. The author has done this with remarkable forensic care. The result is a work that feels both authoritative and alive, grounded in evidence and attentive to the silences and absences that shape any historical reconstruction.

The illustrative material—photographs, documents, ephemera—adds another layer of richness. These images do more than decorate the text; they anchor it. They remind us that these were real people, living real lives, in real places. They make the past tangible.

And of course, this book arrives at a moment when debates about Islam and Muslims—globally and especially in the West—are so often fraught, polarised and historically shallow. In such a climate, Friendships in the Square offers something invaluable: a reminder that Muslims have long been part of the intellectual, cultural and political life of Britain. Their presence is not new. Their contributions are not marginal. Their stories are not anomalies. They are woven into the very fabric of British history. This is why the book will resonate with a much wider audience than just scholars and students—anyone interested in the histories that shape our present, anyone curious about the lives that unfolded in the interstices of empire, anyone who believes that understanding the past is essential to imagining a more generous future; with you.

So let me end by saying this: Friendships in the Square is more than a monograph. It is an act of recovery, a work of intellectual generosity, and a testament to the enduring strength, diversity, and spirit of the people whose stories it shares. It invites us to rethink what we think we know about Muslims in Britain, and to recognise the richness of the histories that have brought us to where we are today.

It is a privilege to celebrate its launch.